One Deer Needed...

Saturday

Sep 28, 2013 at 8:00 AM

Larry Dablemont

The bow season has begun, and while I once took part in it, I don't believe I will bow hunt this year. I had a shoulder problem develop better than a year ago. A specialist told me that it was called "frozen shoulder", especially common among women in their fifties. Well, that really hurt. I had something common to women! I don't know how it happened. One of my best friends wife told me she had had the same thing and it went away in about 10 months. But she had never really used her shoulder to bow hunt or call turkeys or set a trotline, so I don't know if it was as serious for her as it was for me. Anyway, patience isn't one of my virtues, and the limited use of my left shoulder has been a problem. Thankfully I could still paddle my johnboat. With a frozen shoulder, you can't reach behind you, and you can't put your arm up in the air. And it hurts a lot. Pulling a bowstring is next to impossible. But when you are young you can sit in a tree stand and spend four hours enjoying yourself even if you don't see a thing. At my age, you never have four hours to sit and do nothing. You realize as you get older that hours are precious, and you have options of catching fish, shooting squirrels, hunting teal and working on things around the house. Well, skip that last option. My frozen shoulder has left me now, like the ladies who have had it told me it would. But really, since I will kill a couple of deer for my freezer when the muzzle-loader season gets here, and that is all I can eat in a year, why hunt deer in September with anything? Bow hunting should not be very high on any outdoorsman's list in September unless he doesn't fish at all or do anything else but deer hunt. It is a poor time to skin and hang a deer, because it is always too warm. October is bow-hunting time. And that brings me to this real reason I am talking about deer hunting. My old friend Don Scott, who doesn't bow hunt either, needs a deer. Don gets wrapped up in catfishing in September. He needs the deer on October the 11th, on account of, he intends to come to our Big Outdoorsman's Event on October 12th and hang a deer from the rafters, and debone it for all deer hunters to see. As I understand it, he will take all the meat off the deer in about 30 minutes, and leave a meatless skeleton hanging there. Then he will show everyone how to pile all that meat on a table, and piece by piece, make the proper cuts to create steaks, roasts, stew meat, hamburger etc. His wife Lois will show how to properly wrap the meat. The guy is an expert on this kind of thing, and if you are some one who wants to eat the deer you kill, you need to see this. And if you can get a deer during that time, you can hang it in a freezer, and Don will fix it up for you, so you don't have to. All you have to do is call him and tell him you have it, and work out the details. Don often does this with deer that have been killed on the highway. One of my cousins says if I will pay for his gas, he will take his old 85 Chevy pick-up out and run into one on the gravel roads around his place. He says if he can do it so often when he doesn't want to, he surely can do it when he is trying. Anyway, Don's number is 417 623 0359. Should you live near Joplin, you ought to go by his taxidermy shop and talk to him about it. If you live anywhere near me, you can call my office at 417 777 5227. In an upcoming column, I will try to tell you about all the other special people coming to our Big Outdoorsman's Event, but except for this column, I don't think we are going to get any publicity for it. That bothers me, because it seems in this day and time, television stations help publicize some of the most insignificant events you have ever heard of. Our get together on Saturday October 12 is really significant because it will give some attention to young wildlife artists in a large area in and around the Ozarks. While most of these types of events ask a lot of money from participants, our event is free to all. I have printed a thousand flyers which give all the information, and if you are a reader who can post some of them in your area, just call me at that above number and we will send you however many you might want. Do it this week if you want to talk to me, 'cause next week I am going to Canada to hunt and fish a few days, and won't be here.

I have caught a couple of big bass the past few days, and I wrote about the first one in the last column. It isn't something I do in a short time. I caught another 22-inch bass this past week, and I fished for three hours with a topwater lure with no results before he hit. When he did, it was some fight. You can't catch a bass that size in a tree stand, watching for a deer, so I won't bow hunt this year. One of the reason's I won't bow hunt is all the good fishing October will provide, but I also am determined not to give the Missouri Department of Conservation any more money than I have to. By the time you pay for waterfowl stamps, turkey tags, deer tags and all the other special tags you have to buy, then add on the 1/8 th cent sales tax we all pay them, it costs more to hunt and fish in Missouri than any other state in the United States, if my calculations are right. If you want to learn more about that, and consider yourself a conservationist, please visit our website, www.commonsenseconservationist.org to see how we are trying to make some changes. If you aren't a computer person, then have someone you know do it for you.

I too know little about computers. I do not know why anyone would spend time behind that little electronic box when they could spend those same hours out on the water or out in the woods. Kathy Pirtle, one of the ladies who works for our Lightnin' Ridge Publishing Company, takes care of all that stuff for me, and does a great job of it, so I can spend more time outdoors, and write about that. I mention this because there are dozens of requests each week from people who want to join me on something called LinkedIn. I don't know what it is or how to do it, so please don't think I am unsociable. I just don't know a doggone thing about computers, and won't be learning anything more than what I know. I am a grizzled old outdoorsman and I have an image to uphold. Kathy will be looking at those, plus managing our Lightnin' Ridge facebook page, which she says you need to look at. I write little paragraphs which Kathy uses for that page every couple of days, but I have never seen it. I also have a website, which Kathy says our readers can find on something called Google, just by putting larrydablemontoutdoors in it.

Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, mo, 65613 or email me at lightninridge@windstream.net I hope you will listen to my radio program each Sunday morning at 9 a.m. on kwto radio, 560 AM. It is also on the computer at www.radiospringfield.com

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